Tax Resistance in the British Women’s Suffrage Movement

In past hunts I’ve found intriguing hints but few details about the role of
tax resistance in the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain. Here’s a bit
more, in an excerpt from The Militant Suffrage Movement:
Citizenship and Resistance in Britain,
1860–1930:

Rooting their rejection of the law’s authority in the principle that
“government without the consent of the governed is tyranny,” [suffragettes]
claimed the right to withhold consent until they received representation in
Parliament. Withholding consent provided an especially compelling argument
where women could establish that they fulfilled the responsibilities of
citizenship but lacked basic political rights. Tax resistance formed an
important part of suffragettes’ overall strategy to reject the legal
obligations of women who lacked representation, drawing upon an older
tradition of tax resistance in England for its authority.
WTRL
member Mrs. Darent Harrison invoked that
history in her assertion of a “sense of intimacy and spiritual kinship which
must exist between all who have ever defied the law of the day, in defence of
eternal justice, and in obedience to the call of public duty.” The
WSPU
decided to resist payment of income taxes in
November 1907. The
WFL
urged “no vote — no tax” the following month.
Drawing once again on historical precedent, the suffragettes argued that in
the seventeenth century, the king illegally
levied taxes, whereas voteless women were illegally taxed by Parliament, an
even more serious offense, since it occurred at a time of representative
government. Militants believed that, by refusing to pay taxes without
representation, women would force Parliament to grant votes to women. Tax
resistance was frequently presented as part of a larger strategy, as in
January 1908 when Charlotte Despard defined
WFL tax
resistance as part of a larger general strike of women, which would extend to
the refusal to bear children, to manage their homes, or to fulfill any of the
citizen duties they currently performed.

Tax resistance proved to be the longest-lived form of militancy, and the most
difficult to prosecute. More than 220 women, mostly middle-class,
participated in tax resistance between 1906 and
1918, some continuing to resist through the First World War, despite a
general suspension of militancy. Suffragettes resisted payment of two general
categories of tax: the first included property tax, inhabited house duty, and
income tax; the second, taxes and licenses on dogs, carriages, motor cars,
male servants, armorial bearings, guns, and game. Contemporaries had several
theories regarding tax resistance’s appeal. Suffragette speaker and
sympathizer Laurence Housman cited the clarity of tax resistance’s logic as a
primary reason for its popularity. Suffragettes’ tax resistance also cut
across organizational lines. The formation of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League in 1909 brought women together from
numerous organizations, including not only the
WSPU,
WFL,
and
NUWSS
but also the London Society for Women’s Suffrage, Conservative and Unionist
Women’s Franchise Association, Church League for Women’s Suffrage, Free
Church League, Catholic Women’s Suffrage Society, Actresses’ Franchise
League, Artists’ Franchise League, and the Women Writers’ Suffrage League.

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